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A good way to improve???????

Hi, I am currently just looking for a good schedule to follow for improving quickly. All my coaches keep telling me that it is not the quality of the training, but the quantity. I agree with their statement of course, but I am stuck in a position where I am not sure of how to improve my training's quality. Should I, for example, play on the court for 2-3 days, and for 1-2 other days be doing workouts at home? What would be a good training schedule? Also what is a good way to turn playing against your friends into a training system for yourself?
Any help would be appreciated
Thank You

Play every other day. In my opinion the key to improving quickly is having awareness of the correct way of playing until eventually will start to come naturally whenever you play. Make sure you aren't putting the wrong techniques into the muscle memory of yours. A huge common mistake among club players.

Hi, I am currently just looking for a good schedule to follow for improving quickly. All my coaches keep telling me that it is not the quality of the training, but the quantity. I agree with their statement of course, but I am stuck in a position where I am not sure of how to improve my training's quality. Should I, for example, play on the court for 2-3 days, and for 1-2 other days be doing workouts at home? What would be a good training schedule? Also what is a good way to turn playing against your friends into a training system for yourself?
Any help would be appreciated
Thank You

Hi there Dr Dino,

The path in improving how we play badminton constitutes both the importance of the quality and quantity aspect as far as training is concern. You can devote all the time you have there are in a week to play and training with your friends or coach but if the quality of your training does not emphasizes on en lighting you specifically about the correct knowledge and practical technique on how to play badminton then, whatever input you receive will eventually will not produce a good output and therefore you will never improve much on how you play badminton.

Regardless of whatever your coach told you, IMHO, in regards on emphasizing the issue of quality in your training then, the only logical way that you can be guide on the correct fundamental and technique on how to improve how you play is to seek the proper guidance from an experienced coach or experienced colleague that can provide you with that correct input. Its not the matter of just training that will make how you play perfect but its perfect training that eventually will. In regards with the frequency and duration of your training then it all comes down to how much of ample time you have in a week that you can seriously commit that will not disturb your other commitment such as your work and quality time with your family.

For a start, training 2-3 hours with your coach twice a week and supplement it in between your training with another 2 hour of rehearsal of what you've learn by doing sparring with a committed colleague twice a week as well will be sufficient. Whatever time left, you can allocate that time to play with your friend.

If you do a lot of incorrect practice, you are doing yourself a disservice.

To improve in badminton, you need to have:
1. good coaches (to tell you what you are doing wrong, and what you should do instead). Both one-to-one coaching as well one-to-many coaching are good.
2. good lessons to emulate (eg, http://www.bwfbadminton.org/page.aspx?id=19996, youtube and live SS/GP tournaments)
3. good players to practice with. (Good players will also be good coaches. They will tell u what u are doing wrong and what u should do instead.)
4. good local tournaments to participate in. (These are like exams; without exams, you will never improve.)
5. good training on strength and endurance/stamina.

As for schedule, my suggestion is this:

A. Coaching lesson twice a week.
B. practicing/playing badminton four times per week
C. Weight/strength and endurance/stamina training three to four times a week

1. Don't overtrain. When you mentally start to feel tired of badminton, take a break.

2. Footwork. In my opinion, there are 2 aspects to this.
1. speed. you can always improve on this. Will yourself to go faster in every footwork drill you do. The mental aspect of footwork training is always understated.
2. Timing. I would suggest you do footwork drill with someone feeding you birdies. Someone wrote an article about this in bc i'm sure, but i'll summarize it. It doesn't matter if you reach your desired position very early, one can arrive too early at a position and still not feel 'right' to go for the smash or the tight drop. To feel 'right' you have to feel that your momentum from previous movement is being transfered into your shot. When that doesn't happen and your momentum just ends as you come to a full stop to wait for the shuttle as a result of arriving too early, that's when you don't feel 'right'. To fix this, I feel that footwork drills should always be done with birdie feeding so that you can judge for yourself the internal timing of your momentum.

3. Weight training. Train for power, not for mass. There's tons of training articles around. You want to get more powerful and not gain too much body weight. Obviously diet is also a part of this. Once a decent strength level is established, dive into plyometrics. <-- Guidance is needed for this. Injuries are prevalent.

4. Repetition. just over and over and over and over and over again. Right technique of course.

5. Variation. Train 2-3 kinds of timing. For example, for a net shot. Ideally, one should have 3 windows of opportunity in a net drop shot situation.
1. when you take the shuttle very early and get a very steep angle on the net drop.
2. when you take it at a conventional timing and are able to get a nice tight spinning net shot.
3. when you take it late for a cross court net.
Conventional wisdom states that you should always take it at its earliest position. However, training all 3 timings not only helps in your deceptive play, but also when you have to take it very very late when your opponent fools you, you can manage a decent net return. Summary: Get there early, play it early, normal or late. This can be extrapolated into other shots as well.

6. Video tape yourself in a match. So many things show up when you watch yourself play. Watching someone such as lin dan or lee chong wei slowed down and then comparing yourself slowed down reveals sooo many things that aren't obvious when watching it real time. Try to emulate the angle of the video so as to be able to do an easier comparison with technique and footwork.

7. Coaching of course. I'm not a big fan of coaches, since they vary so much as far as technique goes. Even subtle differences are magnified later on when attempting to break through a plateau. I think that if one is analytic enough, you should be able to teach yourself. This is not the case with most people though, and so at least for the BASICS find a good coach, like the others above have mentioned.

Realistically you can't play against friends and improve (unless they are a lot better than you) the fact of the matter is unless you play against new and better players you aren't going to improve a great deal. Perfect your strokes, play a lot of matches and do some circuit training along with running.

Realistically you can't play against friends and improve (unless they are a lot better than you) the fact of the matter is unless you play against new and better players you aren't going to improve a great deal. Perfect your strokes, play a lot of matches and do some circuit training along with running.

yes. Practice and play with a variety of people who are better than you. Both quality and quantity are important.